Aftermath
by SasukeBlade
Summary: 100 word Drabbles As a warrior, death is not an option. Loor must learn to live with the consequences. BokkaLoor BobbyLoor Post Rivers of Zadaa.
1. Nostalgia

Disclaimer: I do not own the Pendragon book series.

These drabbles mostly examine Loor's character after the events in The Rivers of Zadaa. They are 100 words in length and will remain as such.

* * *

She still thinks of him. 

It's not a decision. She doesn't wake up every day and think, "Today I will miss him." Some days she doesn't think of him at all. Others, it brushes past her like a teasing breeze in her hair. Some, it hits harder than a stave to a previous bruise. It's never the same, how much she misses him. Nostalgia, reflection, aching, reeling, living, laughing, loving. There was so much, before Batu and Rokador, and enough even then. But now he's gone and she buries herself in her duties as a Traveler.

Even if it hurts.


	2. Reflection

Sometimes, when Pendragon speaks, Loor almost sees red-kissed lips rather than the moving ones in front of her.

Sometimes, when Pendragon looks at her, she sees flashing green instead of brown. The smoldering gazes are practically identical, but she cannot forget that one's eyes are open in wonder while the other's are closed forever.

Sometimes, when their hands brush, she recalls other days and another boy, a boy who never grew to be a man.

She reminds herself that they are two entirely separate men and it isn't fair to any of them, her loving them both. She does anyway.


	3. Voice

She is reborn in the flume on Zadaa. One moment she is with Pendragon, the next Saint Dane roars out of the flume, and even all her warrior training doesn't make her fast enough to dodge. 

Death wasn't what she'd pictured. Not an end, but a gentle descent. There were others around her, emanating kindness, and she thought maybe they'd known her in their lifetimes.

A man told her it was not her time. When Pendragon revives her, she tells him she didn't identify the voice. Later, she wonders why she did not immediately recognize the voice of Press Tilton.


	4. Optional

Death always seemed so final to Loor. As a child she vowed to never die. As Osa's protégé, she vowed not to die until she was ready. As the Traveler from Zadaa, she vowed not to die until it was her time. It wasn't until Osa's death that she realized that death would come when it would, and her only option was to live as best she could and do her duty. The Traveler from Zadaa had to make provisions for a future she might not see.

Death was not optional for Loor. Or it wasn't until she met Pendragon.


	5. Proud

In the time after Pendragon leaves, Zadaa rebuilds. No longer is there the great divide of Batu and Rokador. Loor watches the newly born changes with the eyes of the weary but content. This is what her fight and sacrifice have won.

The city has been rebuilt, the harvest collected, the bitter wind of winter passed, the crops planted again. Loor looks out on a world reborn. And as she watches the two tribes work side by side, she thinks that Bokka would have been proud of her.

One day she realizes that, long before he died, he already was.


	6. Needed

She is surprised when it ends -- Saint Dane defeated, the turning points passed. It has been years since the beginning at Denduron. Finally over.

Bobby still seems to carry the weight of the world on his shoulders. Though the disaster of a third world war on Second Earth was averted, Ibara was completely destroyed. Bobby looks as if he is slowly being crushed under the weight of countless lost lives.

So when after years of holding back he finally kisses her, she lets him. She could have refused, but he needs this. Instead she leans forward and kisses back.


	7. Improvement

The two women in Bobby Pendragon's life secretly resented one another. Courtney envied her counterpart, for Loor seemed capable of taking on the world without breaking a sweat. Courtney had been fragile, now she wanted-- no, needed-- to be strong.

Courtney was the epitome of what a woman should be and what Loor was not. Powerful, but without brute force. There was an emotional side to her, one that the warrior could not understand, though she needed to. Fighting should not be her only option.

Bobby never became a factor. Their competition was about bettering themselves for themselves, not others.


	8. Acceptance

It's dawn when she wakes, joints stiff from countless past injuries. Her brain is fuzzy, perhaps that is why it doesn't immediately register at first that something is different. If the bottles littering the room don't clue her in, the quiet snores of a very naked Bobby Pendragon lying in her bed give all the explanations she could ask for. 

Her first thought is to deny it ever happened, forget the memories already pouring in, but when Bobby opens his eyes and smiles sleepily at her, something within her gives. She can't ignore this now, not after everything that's happened.


	9. Marriage

She marries Bobby because she loves him, really, and because she knows there will never be anything better. He's her last chance for love, home, and everything in between. Together they have been left behind. So she loves him, in the most desperate sense of that word. Needs him, maybe.

Spader smiles at their wedding ceremony, but she can see the tears he holds back. He needs Bobby too. They all did, once. Maybe they still do. Maybe without him they're like pieces of driftwood out on the open sea. If that's true, then Cloral's Traveler looks about to sink.


	10. Rain

Their two children are splashing in puddles as more water falls from the sky. They watch, one filled with pride that her children will never understand the meaning of drought, the other staring impassively at the way the droplets fall on the windowpane.

She takes his hand in hers and rests her head on his shoulder. Companionship. Like they used to be.

His eyes are brown. Plain and brown and deeper than any ocean she's ever seen. Dark. Dirty. Tired.

"Rain is beautiful," he says to her unspoken question. "But it's not enough to wash away the things I've done."

* * *

Thank you for reading. This is the end, for now. 


End file.
